I Love Autumn

It's always been my favourite season, and more so since I moved to the country.  The days are still warm and sunny but there is already that slight edge in the air, and the light falls differently somehow.
I'm still in pain around my upper back but I seem to have so much energy that it's not stopping me from doing what I want to do.  We went down to Mitre 10, a hardware shop and the only option we have for buying plants in this town.  We got two curly parsley plants, I want some up here near the house, flat leaf parsley, basil, coriander and thyme.

I put the thyme in a pot on the back verandah, I use it a lot in Winter, in stews and casseroles.  I might find a lemon thyme for the vegie garden next time I go into Wagga.

Put the coriander in a pot, and I also bought a packet of seeds.  The year we were in Junee we grew the best crop of coriander we'd ever had by throwing some seed in an old laundry tub under the pergola so I thought I'd plant both and see which did better.  I use so much of it, it's my favourite herb.

Yes this parsley looks a bit sad but I have it in the right place now and it will take off like a rocket soon.  We use a lot of parsley too and I have two plants up in the vegie garden as well.

This pot used to hold a beautiful big established (and expensive) syngonium that I bought for the house in Sydney but it appeared to die off after a few years and Phill put mint into the pot but now the syngonium (White Butterfly) is coming back in the middle there.  Mint will grow from runners so I might move it somewhere else or into another pot.

If you squint you can see the tiny little parsley plant with the basil nearby.  I planted them close to the edge for ease of gathering for cooking. 

This is the sage plant that came from the big pots we had planted at the other house here.  That is Thai basil behind it, it is growing well but has lots of flowers that need picking off (I think, I must look that up).

Flat leaf parsley for tabouli.

This is the little garden with the falling down rose bush.  We threw some Alyssum seeds in for ground cover which had some success but I think I'll whack some herbs in here as well.  They're pretty and we can eat 'em!

This is our chilli bush, seems like a lot of foliage happening and not much fruit.

So there is a great deal of space in that garden, and I envisage it covered with herbs.  I'll just keep planting with trial and error.  It's reticulated up there, I need to get a bag of fertiliser today and dig it in and we'll see what happens.  I am not an overly confident gardener, Phill kind of intimidates me a bit with his "take charge" methods, but left to my own devices I enjoy pottering and planning.  I have the idea of smoking chillis this Winter and preserving them chipotle style as I love the sound of that.

I got up yesterday morning to find a present on the kitchen bench.  Phill had brought me a lovely bottle of perfume back from Melbourne.  It's YSL Baby Doll, a spin off of one of my favourite perfumes, Paris.  What a sweet thing to do and I made sure he knew how much I appreciated it.

I was in bed early, the pain was tiring me, although my darling kids came on a walk with me after dinner, I was determined as I'd had no formal exercise this WW week.  If laughing while walking burns more kj then we did well, they're funny buggers my two.  But I woke early too, about 5am and decided to get up, Phill went to work in the middle of the night.  I made a pot of tea and cleaned my oil burners and filled them with an uplifting morning blend and lit them.  Hopefully it will be another sunny day and I can change the beds and get all the sheets dry.  The pain is a bit better this morning, and I'm feeling positive and happy. 

A new resolve is to work on my book every single day, even if it's just for a few minutes.  Recent events have brought home to me how short life really is, and there are things I really want, and need to get down in print for my children.  I would never have been able to make my living out of writing, my self discipline is terrible.  And yet I have no trouble blogging every day.......I'm just a walking contradiction. ;)

Pat, thanks for pointing out the weight loss blog problems, all fixed now and yes pass on that URL to anyone, I wasn't sure I wanted to do that blog but I think it's going to be fun, and maybe even informative.